As regards the sphere of robotics rendering assistance to handicapped persons, there currently exist robotized systems able to provide almost continuous assistance to handicapped persons confined to a motorized wheelchair. These systems assist these people for carrying a wide variety of tasks, such as those to be effected inside a kitchen or an office.
These robotized systems are known to exist in two different forms: either the robot equips a fixed working station or the robot is situated on the electric wheelchair of the handicapped person concerned, said robot then thus constituting a mobile working station.
If the fixed working station robot has unlimited energetic autonomy, in other words said robot is directly connected to the mains power supply, and if it allows for considerable effectiveness in carrying out particular tasks, it nevertheless does have the drawback of only being able to be used in a restricted environment and thus for a restricted number of tasks. So as to provide the handicapped person with a certain self-sufficiency in his daily life and thus have a large number of tasks to be carried out by the robot, it would be necessary to multiply the number of robots which would thus increase costs significantly.
On the other hand, those robots located on wheelchairs allow for considerable self-sufficiency for the handicapped person, since the robot accompanies him continuously. However, these robots located on wheelchairs do have several drawbacks, especially the one with slight energetic autonomy as the robot is fed by batteries contained on the electric wheelchair. Moreover, it is difficult to instal a robot functioning automatically as the data system able to be installed does not provide sufficient power to store a large number of programs enabling tasks to be carried out by the robot.
In addition, when the robot works with respect to a fixed environment, it needs to locate its references with respect to this environment so as to carry out automatic tasks. This referencing is not simple as the wheelchair has a random positioning with respect to the environment.